


Stay Vertical

by underpressure



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Famous Harry, M/M, Motorcycles, No Sex, Non-Famous Louis, Slight Mentions of Harry's PR Relationships, Taylor Swift in particular
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-06
Updated: 2014-07-06
Packaged: 2018-02-07 17:43:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1908024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/underpressure/pseuds/underpressure
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Louis' been working on a cars for a long time and he's seen a good few dedicated vehicle owners, but never one quite as dedicated as Harry Styles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stay Vertical

**Author's Note:**

  * For [braidedtissues](https://archiveofourown.org/users/braidedtissues/gifts).



Louis had always liked working on cars. He liked the complex systems under the hood, the way oil stained his fingertips and how he could always smell gasoline no matter where he was. His first car was a candy apple red 2005 Ford Escape XLT that smelled like cigarette smoke from the guy who owned it before (or at least, that’s what he told his mother). He’d loved that car, had loved opening the hood just to see what was going on under there. He watched closely when the man down at the garage changed the oil or rotated the tires and it had only taken becoming friends with Liam to get a job at his dad’s auto repair shop. Of course, Liam turned out to be his best friend so maybe he was meant to become friends with Liam for more than his dad’s car shop. 

It’s four years later, when he’s twenty-two with marked up skin and too long hair, and he still works in Payne Auto Repair. Liam’s dad only works in the office now and Louis gets to change the oil in cars from all over California and Nevada as they drive through to Hollywood, Santa Monica, or Westwood. Liam is bent over a car in the first garage slot, a 2014 Hyundai in an awful blue color that hurts his eyes, and Zayn is out back in the separate garage area painting flames on the side of a mustang for some eighteen-year-old douche bag. Louis is in love. He stretches back on the sofa in the air conditioned waiting area, sweat cooling on the back of his neck as Sandy noses at the side of his face. 

“No, babe. Too hot for a cuddle today,” he says, but his hand comes up to rub at one of her fluffy ears anyway. It’s nearing high eighty in Los Angeles today and Louis is so lucky that Liam’s dad likes him best and lets him take over the lobby and office when he can’t come in. Keeping a hand out for Sandy to nose at, to lick over his permanently oil-stained fingers, Louis lets his eyes slip shut for a tiny nap. Louis has always valued his naps; as it were, naps were hard to come by when one had four little sisters (now five and a brother) who constantly craved his attention. Now, he could come home from work, lie down on his couch as Sandy curled up on the floor at the foot of the couch and give in to sleep. When the phone rings just as he’s dozed off, it makes him feel fifteen again when Fizzy would shake his shoulder and beg him to play dolls with her and Lottie. 

He feels panicked when he wakes, like his heart might pound out of his chest as he stumbles on weak legs over to the phone. It’s on a shrill ring when he picks up and mumbles out a “Payne’s” half expecting it to be Geoff calling to remind them to close the garage doors before they leave because rain is coming in. In Louis’ defense, that was one time.

“Yeah, ugh, I need a tow truck.” The voice on the line sounds embarrassed, and Louis understands because the first time his car had broken down, he had been mortified. And slightly stoned, but that was a different story. He goes through the motions of finding out the man’s location and the vehicle (motorcycle, so he’s expecting a proper lad) before grabbing the keys for the truck off of the wall and saying a goodbye to Sandy and Liam so that he can drive over to save motorcycle boy. 

Louis knows the streets of Los Angeles. He’s driven down them his entire life. When he was a young boy, before his mother had met her first husband, she would drive them out to Huntington Beach because that was where she grew up. He could remember eating hotdogs with too much mustard; then later running into the ocean and turning his back to the waves, so they could shove at him until he fell laughing into the water. He passes by all of the smaller shops and the larger ones where paparazzi sit outside with their large, expensive cameras and beers even though it’s only two in the afternoon. 

He follows the instructions from over the phone, which take him straight into a residential area that he is not familiar with. There are a lot of parts to Louis, and Los Angeles is a big part of him. He had grown up here, had spent his entire life figuring himself out underneath the California sun with sand between his toes. He knew Los Angeles like the back of his hand until it came to the places where people with fat checking accounts and eight feet deep swimming pools live. Louis did not go to school with people from this part of town, but that doesn’t mean that he didn’t want to. 

He takes in the area, keeping an eye out for a broken down motorcycle and a leather jacket. What he finds is definitely a motorcycle but less leather and more plaid, as well as a few jackasses with flashing cameras. Great. A Celebrity. He pulls off on the side of the road, parking easily and getting out of the truck. 

It’s hot as balls outside but the guy is still wearing his helmet, probably an attempt to preserve his name, and the sleeves of his plaid button-up are only slightly rolled up at his wrists. He’s wearing skinny jeans, tighter than ones that Louis or Zayn usually wear and that’s almost too wild. Louis only feels slightly scruffy in his basketball shorts, stolen from Liam, and a tank top that he was given when he graduated from community college. It’s got a half naked woman on the front. What a great impression on behalf of Geoff Payne and his car shop. 

“Hey, I’m Louis from Payne’s Automotive Services. You aren’t hurt or anything right?” Louis can see the bike lying a bit funny on the grass, like the guy had fallen over with it and if he’s hurt then Louis has to call an ambulance by procedure. 

“No, I’m alright. I just want to load it up and get away from them, yaknow?” He shrugs lightly and the helmet he’s yet to remove muffles his voice. Louis shrugs back at him and goes to right the bike. He braces it on the stand as he sets up the other bits and pieces. He takes his time wheeling it on, strapping it nice and tight, and then climbs back into the track to slowly reel the chains in so that the motorcycle glides onto the bed of the trailer. He gets back out to secure the hooks so the motorcycle for sure doesn’t go flying out into the middle of LA traffic. 

“We can go if you’re ready?” Louis jerks his thumb at the front of the truck and the guy quickly makes his way over. And yeah, he’s definitely not the lad that Louis was expecting. Once they’re inside and Louis’ buckled himself in and turned down the ridiculously loud Katy Perry song playing on the radio, he realizes that the boy has taken off his helmet. Now, Louis was often a man who could keep his cool. He had towed cars of celebrities before, usually actors from soap operas or lifetime moves that he vaguely recognized from playing in the lobby of the shop. And there was that one time he had picked up Chad Michael Murray, which had been his long running party story since. This one though… this one might take the cake. 

Fucking Harry Styles. Louis knew a lot about him. His posters had decorated the walls of his sisters’ bedrooms and their binders and notebooks and t-shirts. He was all over the radio and television and now he was in the front seat of Louis’ tow truck. His sisters were probably shitting themselves from their house in Burbank with no idea why. Fuck, he’s shitting himself just looking at him. 

The thing about Harry Styles is that he is probably the most beautiful person that Louis’ ever seen (and Louis is friends with Zayn, who looks like he’s walked out of a Calvin Klein ad even when taking a poo). Harry’s sat in the seat in his ridiculously tight jeans and plaid top with his helmet resting in his lap and he looks like he’s climbed right out of Louis’ – and all of his little sisters’ – dreams. 

“Alright?” Harry Styles is speaking to him and Louis might be a lot of things and most of them are slightly douchey but he’s not going to let on like he’s star struck by Harry Styles. He can do that. He can have a perfectly normal conversation with someone whose wristwatch costs more than the monthly rent on Louis’ apartment, all of his pairs of VANS and his student loan debt combined. 

“I’m good, man. How are you?” The paparazzi have moved up to take photos at the side of the car so Louis tries to get onto the road quickly so that the flashing lights don’t blind him on top of the bright California sun. 

“Alright.” He’s a bit embarrassed to admit that he’s watched videos of Harry before, but the Christmas that Lottie had gotten the Styles and Horan: All Access, a video of the famous duo’s life on tour, she had insisted that they watch it at least three times before New Years. (Not that Louis ever complained because Styles was shirtless through the majority of it but that’s another story.)

His voice is even more ridiculously rough in person. 

“So what happened back there, with your bike, I mean?” Louis asks. He’s never been one for awkward silences except for when he initiates them, like with Liam when they’d just met. Now though, he wants Harry to feel comfortable because, beyond being a hot musician he was also a celebrity with more than enough street cred to drop the garage’s name in a few interviews. Good head for business. That’s what Louis has. Geoff should be thanking God every day for him.

“I was just riding and then there was this sputtering noise and the wheels kicked a bit and then it fell over,” he says, long fingers dancing over the rip in the knee of his jeans. “With me on it, it fell over with me on it.” 

“You aren’t hurt though, right? Didn’t you say that?” He takes a left and then a right and tries not to get distracted by the beautiful curve of Harry’s thighs or the soft picking of his fingertips. It doesn’t take very long to get back to the shop, Louis realizes because the popstar is nodding that he’s okay as Louis’ parks the truck off to the side like he was taught when he was sixteen. It’s odd how it can feel like ages going somewhere but coming back takes no time at all. 

Louis leaves Harry at the truck for a moment to grab Liam, who is the only person in the garage to work with motorcycles, and then leads Harry into the lobby. Sandy is curled up beside the door and quickly rises to her feet to nose around Louis’ ankles in greeting. 

“Hey baby. You holding down the fort?” Louis scratches behind her ears for a second before he makes his way behind the desk. “If you want to have a seat you can. It’ll be a few before Liam can tell you what happened.” 

Out of all of the times that he’s imagined talking to Harry Styles, (which are few and far between because he is an adult that doesn’t daydream about things that are (were?) unlikely to happen); Harry was never quite as quiet as he is when sat in the shop’s lobby. His helmet is sat on the seat next to him, and his knees are tight together. He’s got two cellphones, which Louis finds rather odd if he’s honest, and he’s taking turns texting on both of them. 

Harry is quick to leave after Liam tells him about the problems with his bike’s engine and how it’ll take a few days. Louis tries not to be disappointed that Harry doesn’t say goodbye. 

 

//

 

Louis loved being in the air conditioning and taking long naps with his dog in the lobby, but this is what he was here for. The grease on his fingertips and the sweat on the back of his neck were building blocks, important pieces that all added up to an expensive machine that let Louis under the hood. He had always enjoyed working on cars, especially when he’d been eighteen with divorcing parents and four confused younger sisters. Now he’s twenty-two with an engaged mother and five little sisters and one brother and it’s still a wonderful thing that lets him leave real life.

He’s messing around with rusted carburetors when a loud knock comes on the side of the car – a 1979 Ford Mustang that had been abandoned and left out on someone’s lawn and was being redone as a gift for some boy’s sweet sixteen. Louis’ almost embarrassed about banging the back of his head on the inside of the hood, but he’s more angry at the prospects of having to see Zayn or Liam laughing at him while he rubs the goose egg growing on his scalp. 

It’s not Zayn or Liam. Harry Styles is back in his ridiculously tight jeans and heeled boots. His hair is tied back with a scarf, and his sunglasses reflect the absolute mess that is Louis at twelve seventeen on a Tuesday. Fuck.

“Hi,” he says, pulling the sunglasses from his face. “Is Liam in?”

Liam had left for lunch about thirty minutes beforehand with strict instructions that nobody was to touch Harry Style’s bike. Louis had obviously gone over to poke around at the seat and handlebars just so Liam could throw a fit later when they were tilted a bit too far left than when he left them. 

“No, he left for lunch a bit ago. You need something?” 

“I was just going to check on my bike, but I’ll come back later. Is that alright?” 

Louis nods – like he’s going to turn down another visit from Harry Styles. 

 

//

 

It’s been done in the past. People often form bonds with their vehicles like when they name them or spend hours on their days off washing and waxing them until the paint job shines. Louis has seen customers be clingy before but never quite like Harry Styles. Once a man had called every afternoon right before closing just to be given a detailed description on what had been fixed on his car that day. Harry Styles does not make phone calls. He drives in.

His white Mercedes is beautiful. Louis will give him that… Well, he’d give Harry anything. But having to tell Harry that his bike isn’t ready yet and that Liam is still trying to tinker around with the engine is something unlike anything he’s done before. To his credit, Harry never seems upset, and he’d taken to bringing in these cheesy bagels and cups of iced coffee for them everyday like the caffeine will make Liam work faster.

Louis finally figures it out on the fifth day. Harry’s shown up in his sixth pastel colored plaid shirt and Louis is still kind of hopeless just to watch him pet Sandy from the corner of his eye or find a reason to talk to Zayn while Harry is listening to Liam talk about his bike. It takes until the fifth day to realize that while Louis is listening to Zayn talk about the cat Perrie bought (read: watching Harry from the corner of his eye) for him to notice that Harry is totally watching him back.

If there is one thing that Louis finally figured out when he turned twenty and started being able to love himself was that he was damned good looking. It wasn’t being cocky, because he knew that just because he thought of himself as attractive, he wasn’t everyone’s type. Zayn’s showing him a video on Perrie’s instagram of their new kitten eating when he catches Harry’s eyes sweep up the line of his legs, settle over his ass and then follow up to his eyes. A smirk settles over his lips when they make eye contact and Louis feels himself flush and then slightly frown. Since when is he shy about being checked out. He’s had his ass licked by complete strangers but one look from this man and he’s blushing like a schoolgirl at recess. He turns back to find that Zayn hasn’t even noticed him not paying attention and he feels Harry’s eyes still on his back even though Liam is probably still chatting about the bike. 

Later when he’s lying on the sofa in the lobby with Sandy nosing at his neck from the floor and his eyes trained on the television, Harry Styles comes in and places himself next to Louis’ feet. Louis’ eyes trace over the strong line of his shoulder, the thickness of his bicep through the plaid sleeves and the largeness of his hands settled over his own thighs. Jesus. Harry’s definitely the most attractive person that Louis has ever seen.

“So do you and Zayn not work on the bikes?” He’s obviously a king of conversation, Louis thinks. He flushes just from Harry talking and that makes him even more embarrassed. 

“Liam and I do the cars but Liam does bikes too. Zayn just does the painting and detailing jobs. Why?” Harry’s angled his body on the sofa so that he’s turned toward Louis completely, lifting Louis’ feet to rest on his thigh which is quite personal but Louis’ always been a person who’s thrived on contact with other people. Also Harry Styles is touching him. Fuck. 

“I was just noticing. I mean, whenever I come in,” Harry says, a light blush reddening at his cheeks which makes Louis feel a bit better at least, “Liam is always the one I have to talk to. I was just wondering why you couldn’t ever update me. Or Zayn, of course. Why he couldn’t update me either, yaknow.” 

Louis bites his lip, pushes his heels into Harry’s thigh twice before pulling back to sit up. “Liam doesn’t let the rest of us work on bikes. It’s his ‘area of expertise’.” 

Harry’s teeth are worrying his lip into the prettiest shade of pink and Louis cannot keep his eyes off of it, even as Harry seems to start talking about Liam working on his motorcycle and something about having to leave for New York in four days and then about how sweet Sandy is as she nudges at his knees for some love. He comes back to when Harry stands up, dropping Louis’ feet back to the sofa. Sandy jumps up to curl at the bottom.

“Liam should be back from lunch now, so I’m going to go find him but would you like to maybe go get some coffee or something tomorrow? After I come see about my bike.” 

“I don’t drink coffee.” Mentally, Louis slaps a hand over his mouth, travels back in time and tells Harry freaking Styles that he would love to get coffee with him. He would also love to marry him, raise his children and die in bed next to him. “But, like, I’d love to eat something later, like dinner.” 

“Dinner? Yeah, yeah. Let’s do dinner. I can pick you up tomorrow.” Harry somehow manages to look as excited as Louis feels. His cheeks feel as if they are on fire. 

 

//

 

Harry makes his mandatory stop at the shop right after lunch the next day. Louis is bent, once again, under the hood of the ’99 Mustang and Harry Styles is apparently not the smooth Lothario that the media plays him up to be. Louis had grown used to things being loud in his life as he’d grown up with so many siblings, but nothing could quite prepare him for the ridiculous clanging and banging of an entire toolbox being knocked over. He jumps into the air, slamming his head on the underside of the hood and cursing loudly. 

There are mixtures of bolts and things lying at Harry’s feet and the look on his face is one of complete mortification. Louis can’t help but laugh. 

“I’m so sorry. I was trying to sneak up on you to surprise you for maybe a lunch date instead of dinner and I ruined my surprise.” Louis can barely hear Harry over his own laughter but he hears enough to realize that their date has been moved up in time and he probably looks disgusting. His laughter stops immediately.

“Lunch date?” 

“Yeah, Liam fixed my bike and I have an extra helmet. I thought maybe you’d like to go out for a pizza or Panini or something?” A gold glitter helmet hanging from his left hand and the hopeful smile on his face are enough to convince Louis to say yes. Somewhere in his head a voice reminds him that he wouldn’t have said no anyway. 

“Sure. I probably look awful and I’m covered in oil and grease and stuff but yeah. Just let me wash my hands?” He turns to head back to one of the sinks and if he’d not been so wrapped up in his own hands he would have heard Harry’s low reply.

“You look perfect.”

 

//

 

Motorcycles are very different to cars. Louis’ driven a good many cars and trucks and mopeds. Motorcycles aren’t his area of expertise. He’s ridden on one once with Liam when they were sixteen and that had ended with seven stitches on his left side and the scariest talking-to he’s ever gotten from his mother. 

Harry climbs on first, gold glitter helmet pulled over his curls. He turns to look at Louis, Ray Bans covering his eyes and cheeks pulled up with a smile. Pulling the spare black helmet over his head, Louis grips onto one of Harry’s shoulders to throw his legs over the middle.   
“Ready?” Harry asks as Louis leans forward to wrap his arms around Harry’s waist. He nods heavily with the helmet on and knots his fingers into the fabric of Harry’s shirt. 

When Louis was fourteen, his mother drove him and his sisters out to Disneyland. The feeling that swooped through his stomach while he laced his fingers between Charlotte’s and opened his mouth in a shrill scream is the same one that lunges when Harry presses the gas down. This time he doesn’t scream but he laughs, loud but muffled behind the helmet. 

The streets of Los Angeles whip around them as Harry steers them through the midday traffic. No one recognizes them, though it’s the last thing on Louis’ mind, even as they sit at multiple traffic lights. Butterflies wrestle around Louis’ stomach throughout the entire drive and his thighs feel slightly numb from the vibration of the engine between them and he’s never felt as excited. It isn’t long before Harry parks the bike off the side of some small Mexican restaurant on Olympic Boulevard.

The restaurant isn’t lit up like Louis has seen it before during the night but the outside is littered with obvious tourists looking to see if they really want to eat there. Harry laces their fingers together so that they don’t get lost, which results in Louis’ heart skipping a tiny beat and pulls them through the crowd to the front doors. Louis’ never eaten at Rosa Mexicano before but Liam had taken Sophia there plenty of times when they first started dating and had always casually thrown in how good the food was around how beautiful Sophia was and how lovely their date was. God, Liam was such a sap. 

But so was Louis because as the hostess led them to a table for two beneath patterned lamps and plants, Louis only could think about holding Harry’s hand. He’d been on plenty of dates before, in the beginning with boys and girls and then later with only boys. He’d held hands with them, usually when he was tipsy from the red wine he’d drank with dinner and with the other hand firmly around their waist to guide them to the car and then to bed. He can’t remember what their hands felt like though. Did they have short fat fingers or long skinny ones? Did their palms sweat because of the alcohol or because their stomach was in knots because Louis was holding their hand? He can’t remember.

With Harry’s fingers laced through his, he cannot fathom ever forgetting it (and truth be told, he doesn’t really want to let go). Louis’ always had small hands with long skinny fingers. They are slightly the bane of his existence because he’d always thought big hands were nice. Harry had big hands – huge paws that could cover Louis’ entirely. When their fingers lace together, Harry’s hand is warm and comforting. It’s heavy too, grounding which is a bit weird because Harry is a celebrity. Isn’t it funny how once you get used to knowing someone as your friend they become more than what others see them as?

To other people, Harry is an idea. He is a person on a poster or on the radio in their car. He isn’t a twenty-year-old boy who fits his feet around the outsides of theirs and winks over the top of menus. When Louis had first realized that Harry was, in fact, Harry Styles; the Harry Styles from magazine covers and Taylor Swift song lyrics and the radio. Now, in the middle of Rosa Mexicano with salsa on his fingertips and guacamole staining the sides of his mouth, Harry is just Harry. He’s not some famous guy that sneaks out of young star’s hotel rooms early in the morning or some douche bag that views other people as conquests. He’s this awesome person with a dumb personal ringtone for his older sister and sincere smiles for wait-staff. 

He’s also flawed in a way that Louis doesn’t often view celebrities. It’s easy to see Lindsay Lohan or Amana Bynes as fuck-ups when they constantly make obvious mistakes in the mass media but Harry doesn’t. He’s not doing drugs or verbally bullying other stars via social media. He just forgives too easily and tries to please everyone and it’s very obvious in the way he tells stories and presses kisses to Louis’ cheek while leaving a tip on the table and smiling at the older couple in the booth next to theirs. 

“I want to take you over to this little coffee place. You don’t have to drink the coffee; they have like teas and stuff but I just think you might like it.” Harry’s hold hand covers over Louis’ shoulder and then traces down the length of his arm to release and grip at the dip of his waist. Louis’ gut swoops. He can’t help but lean in, lift an arm to wrap around Harry’s waist and smile at him. He nods an okay.

The coffee shop that Harry leads them to is not far off and, to Harry’s joy, no one stops them on the way. He knows the somewhere off down the street the paparazzi are taking photos of them because he and Louis had both spotted them. Louis tried his best to ignore the ridiculously large cameras and the men behind them; it was easy to do when Harry laced their fingers together and lead them into a hole in the way coffee shop.

It’s easy to tell why Harry thought of Louis when he saw it. There are photographs of old cars and motorcycles on the walls, and the floor is concrete like the one in their garage. The shop obviously used to be a mechanic’s workshop due to the rising doors on the front, all lifted so that people can sit close to the sun while they type away on their laptops and sip their frappes. Harry orders a coffee and Louis gets a tea, and they move over to sit at a small table in the corner, away from the outside so that the men cannot take photos of them. 

“So, I have a confession,” Harry whispers, leaning to Louis with a wide smile on his face. “The bike isn’t mine.” 

Louis’ brow furrows and he looks at Harry for a long minute before dumbly asking, “What?” 

“The bike that I messed up. It’s not mine. My friend who handles our LA business is the owner of the bike. He lends it to me in LA so that I can ride around town without being noticed. I’ve got a license for it and everything. What I’m saying though is that I didn’t come back everyday to check that the bike was okay. I knew the bike was okay…” He trails off, turning to thank the boy in all black that sets their drinks on the table.

“So… wait, I’m confused. If that’s not your bike and you weren’t worried, why did you come back everyday?” 

“Promise not to laugh okay?" Louis nods. "I came back to see you. It was just that when you got out of the truck to help me with the bike I just couldn’t stop thinking about you. I went back to my hotel and told Niall all about you and then I couldn’t stop myself from coming back the next day to see you again.” Harry’s cheeks blush heavily and it isn’t from the heat of his coffee or the sunshine that is dancing over to them in their secluded corner. 

“I don’t know what to say…”

“When I got into the truck and you didn’t freak out or act like I was anyone different than a guy off the street, I knew it would be okay to like talk with you and maybe ask you out sometime – don’t laugh just because I thought about asking you out when you were wearing those cutoff sweatpants.” 

Louis does laugh. He laughs from the ridiculousness of it all, but he laughs mainly because he felt the exact same way. Not because Harry was famous or well known or anything but because there was something about it. 

When Louis got his first car and started to tinker around under the hood and figure out where things belonged, he started to sketch out an idea of where he belonged. Now in a coffee shop with his feet resting between Harry’s and a tea losing it’s heat in front of him, Louis feels the same way. It may be new and uncertain and wild, but that’s the same way he felt the first time he drove a car. Everything was different, and that was what made it so wonderful. Harry was different and he made Louis feel wonderful. 

“I’m really happy you said all of that because now I can ask you,” Louis laughs. “Do you want to do something tomorrow then? Maybe dinner and a movie? Or I can cook something. I can make this one meal; you’ll love it.” 

“Yeah, I would love that.”

**Author's Note:**

> The title is a reference to some motorcycle lingo and is a joke because in the beginning Harry had trouble staying vertical. 
> 
> "Stay Vertical" - A parting expression between bikers meaning ride safely. ([x](http://www.motorcyclegiftshop.com/motorcycle_slang_s-z.html))


End file.
